Monday, 26 March 2012

Canyon of the Colorado River near the mouth of the San Juan River in Arizona

The walls of stone shrinking a little more every livingnight, and when voices then begin to murmur in the darkonce again, in broken tones, it's difficult to understandthe stage directions, if that's what they're meant to be, through the background hallooing of the windaround this large theatrical canyon, where the tall hatstell a tale of five cowboys, positioned in a perfect lineagainst the eyepopping symmetry of the landform,erect, stiff in the saddle, kabuki-likein their frozen mechanical formality. The signswhich have been unclear up to now start to suggestthat this is no common dream; the hollow clip clop of the hooves across the baked-earth canyon floorbeneath the escarpment makes you wonder if the stage carrying the mail-order bride from the East might notbe running more than merely a little late, and whether the sage for that matter might turn out to be not really purple after allbut dyed a strange ashen-ember hue; and whether, too,these mechanical varmints costumed as ordinary peopleare not trying to clamber into the picture merely to let the audience know they are here, trying to be trying, and if the stage never arrives, will she still remember you?

Canyon De Chelly in Arizona. Walls of the Grand Canyon are about 1200 feet high

Photos by TimothyH. O'Sullivan (1840-1882), from U.S. Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian under Lieutenant George M. Wheeler, 1871 Expedition (U. S. Geological Survey Photographic Library)

Sunday, 25 March 2012

Mitate rajōmon / Correspondence of Rajōmon: a man departing, holding a closed umbrella over his right shoulder, looking back at a young woman standing on a veranda, leaning against a post: Suzuki Harunobu (1725?-1770) (Irving H. Olds Collection, Japanese Prints and Drawings, Library of Congress)

Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake. My house was on a cliff. The thing could take Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row. Then the long pause and then the bigger shake. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

And far too large for my feet to step by. I hoped that various buildings were brought low. The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

It seemed quite safe till she got up and dressed. The guarded tourist makes the guide the test. Then I said The Garden? Laughing she said No. Taxi for her and for me healthy rest. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

The language problem but you have to try. Some solid ground for lying could she show? The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

None of these deaths were her point at all. The thing was that being woken he would bawl And finding her not in earshot he would know. I tried saying Half an Hour to pay this call. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

I slept, and blank as that I would yet lie. Till you have seen what a threat holds below, The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

Tell me again about Europe and her pains, Who’s tortured by the drought, who by the rains. Glut me with floods where only the swine can row Who cuts his throat and let him count his gains. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

A bedshift flight to a Far Eastern sky. Only the same war on a stronger toe. The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

Tell me more quickly what I lost by this, Or tell me with less drama what they miss Who call no die for a god for a throw, Who says after two aliens had one kiss It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

But as to risings, I can tell you why. It is on contradiction that they grow. It seemed the best thing to be up and go. Up was the heartening and the strong reply. The heart of standing is we cannot fly.

Japanese troops entering Mukden (Shenyang) during the Mukden Incident, aka the Manchurian Incident, a staged event devised by Japanese military as pretext for invading northern China: photographer unknown, September 1931; image by Shizhao, 3 April 2006

Tsuchiyama: travelers travelers crossing a bridge spanning a raging river, during a rain storm near the Tsuchiyama station on the Tōkaidō Road: Andō Hiroshige (1797-1858), from the series: Tōkaidō gojūsantsugi no uchi: 53 stations of the Tōkaidō Road, between 1833 and 1836 (Irving H. Olds Collection, Japanese Prints and Drawings, Library of Congress)

Evening rain at Azuma Shrine: Andō Hiroshige (1797-1858), from the series Eight views in the environs of Edo, between 1827-1840 (Japanese Prints and Drawings, Library of Congress)

William Empson (1906-1984): Aubade, 1933, written in Tokyo, where the poet was at the time professor of English at the National University; first published in an early version (with eight additional lines, personalizing the relationship -- "I do not know what forces made it die" -- and the leavetaking situation, and with "we" in the final line given as "you") in Life and Letters 17, Winter 1937; first published in this version in The Gathering Storm, 1940.

___

Empson's note on line 31:

'The same war' in Tokyo then was the Manchurian incident.

___

When I was in Japan, from 1931 to 1934, it was usual for the old hand in the English colony to warn the young man: don’t you go and marry a Japanese because we’re going to be at war with Japan within ten years; you'll have awful trouble if you marry a Japanese; and this is what the poem is about.

Empson on Aubade, from William Empson in Conversation with Christopher Ricks, in The Review, June 1963

Bapuji & his daughter, Varanasi. India. This sadhu is a Khareshwari Sita Ram Baba (Vishnu devotee) who has already been doing tapasya for over 10 years, that is making a vow to keep standing for 20 years, a mortification of the body to concentrate on the mind: photo by fredcan, 2007

From The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, in Seven Parts (Part IV, ll. 272-287): Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1797-1798; first published anonymously in Lyrical Ballads (original ed. 1798), with text as here given containing deliberate archaisms of spelling and syntax, intended by the author to allow the poem to be received as a work of unknown age, discovered in manuscript

Thursday, 22 March 2012

Burning in Manikarnika. Varanasi, India. Manikarnika Ghat, on the banks of the sacred Ganges is the main burning ghat in Varanasi (Benares). It is said that this ghat symbolises the principles of both creation and destruction, which are inseparable. This is certainly the most auspicious place for a Hindu to be cremated, as it is believed that dying in Kashi (the city of light) and being cremated here brings Moksha (liberation), thus breaking the cycle of births and deaths. Some also say that Lord Shiva himself whispers the mantra of liberation in the ear of the deceased. Dead bodies are carried here on bamboo stretchers through the alleyways of the old city, and are doused in the Ganges before being cremated. The pyres are then handled by a group of outcasts known as doms, until the whole burning process is over: photo by fredcan, 5 June 2008

bones

left

on our doormat

by an invisible dog

in the gali

a dead cat

old man raising the shutter of his shop

an autorickshaw

filled

with school children

two coins

& then everything

slips

thru

the hole

in my pocket

the dead cat again

Aditya Bahl: When I went to buy ENO for Ashish at 7:30, from dipping butterflies, 15 January 2012

Gali, India. Religious images are a common sight in Varanasi (Benares), the holy city of Hindus, as seen here with these two popular wall paintings of Lord Shiva, known as Mahadev in Varanasi, and Ganesha: photo by fredcan, March 2008

The lady & the dog. Life on the ghats in Varanasi (Benares): photo by fredcan, 29 October 2007

Beggars, Varanasi ghats: photo by fredcan, March 2008

With gratitude to fredcan for opening these worlds to us through his lens and to the poet aditya for bringing the work to our eyes

Wednesday, 21 March 2012

On longer evenings, Light, chill and yellow, Bathes the serene Foreheads of houses. A thrush sings, Laurel-surrounded In the deep bare garden, Its fresh-peeled voice Astonishing the brickwork. It will be spring soon, It will be spring soon -- And I, whose childhood Is a forgotten boredom, Feel like a child Who comes on a scene Of adult reconciling, And can understand nothing But the unusual laughter, And starts to be happy.

Tuesday, 20 March 2012

Listen Fates, who sit nearest of gods to the throne of Zeus, and weave with shuttles of adamant, inescapable devices for councels of every kind beyond counting, Aisa, Clotho and Lachesis, fine-armed daughters of Night, hearken to our prayers, all-terrible goddesses, of sky and earth.

Pindar:Fragmenta Chorica Adespota, 5Now if it is not the causal connections which we are concerned with, then the activities of the mind lie open before us. And when we are worried about the nature of thinking, the puzzlement which we wrongly interpret to be one about the nature of a medium is a puzzlement caused by the mystifying use of our language. This kind of mistake recurs again and again in philosophy; e.g. when we are puzzled about the nature of time, when time seems to us a queer thing.We are most strongly tempted to think that here are things hidden, something we can see from the outside but which we can't look into. And yet nothing of the sort is the case. It is not new facts about time which we want to know. All the facts that concern us lie open before us. But it is the use of the substantive "time" which mystifies us. If we look into the grammar of that word, we shall feel that it is no less astounding that man should have conceived of a deity of time than it would be to conceive of a deity of negation or disjunction.Ludwig Wittgenstein: from The Blue Book (1930s Cambridge lecture notes as circulated by students), 1958Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone? Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord?Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, Mother.You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck.It matters not how much I call you "Mother, Mother." You hear me, but you will not listen.

Rāmprasād Sen (1718-1785), in David R. Kinsley: Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religions, 1988

If thou openest not the gate to let me enter, I will break the door, I will wrench the lock, I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors. I will bring up the dead to eat the living. And the dead will outnumber the living."Descent of the Goddess Ishtar into the Lower World", in Morris Jastrow, The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Our life has no end in just the way our visual field has no limits.Ludwig Wittgenstein: from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921

Time is not, Time is the evil, beloved.

Ezra Pound: Canto LXXIV, from The Pisan Cantos, 1948

"All the time -- I feel the hands of the clock -- moving."

Ezra Pound: from The Paris Review interview, 1960

................................... ...........................Time, space,.......................................neither life nor death is the answer.

FateWhen people talked about the inevitableDesign of a mortal span, what was always meant The earliest words for it are transparentMetaphors, moira, aisaDenoting share or portion, those distinctiveEvents of a person's life which carryChange like the scar of a laserA talisman stamped into theChainA knotComplicationATroposNo turningIt's like listening to the radio at nightIn a heavy stormInterference line noiseStaticHer messagesGet lostIn silenceThe frequencies can no longer be sorted outA kink or tangle in the threadScissorsIn the hand of natureOne can't argue with this any moreThan a bell with its flaw

The Three Fates, called by Hesiod the Daughters of the Night. Atropos or Aisa (left) was the oldest of the Three Fates, and was known as the "inflexible" or "inevitable." It was Atropos who chose the mechanism of death and ended the life of each mortal by cutting their thread with her "abhorred shears." She worked along with her two sisters, Clotho, who spun the thread, and Lachesis, who measured the length: Cecchino del Salviati, 1550 (Galleria Palatino, Pizzi Palace, Florence)

The Triumph of Death, or The Three Fates. The Three Fates, Clotho (right), Lachesis (centre) and Atropos (left), who spin, draw out and snip the thread of Life, represent Death, triumphing over the fallen body of Chastity, in this tapestry illustrating the third subject in Petrarch's poem The Triumphs (first, Love triumphs; then Love is overcome by Chastity, Chastity by Death, Death by Fame, Fame by Time and Time by Eternity): Flemish tapestry, probably Brussels, c. 1510-1520; image by Wilhem Meis, 5 December 2004

Bas relief of Atropos cutting the thread of life: photo by Tom Oates, 18 June 2008

Su Song's water-powered astronomical clock (scaled model). The original clock tower designed by Su Song (1020-1021 AD) was three storeys tall (c. 35 feet), with an armillary sphere on the roof, and a celestial globe on the third storey. From an exhibition at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California: photo by Kowloonese, 12 July 2004

Chinese mechanical and horological engineering from the Song Dynasty; this diagram provides an overall general view of the inner workings and armillary sphere of Su Song's clocktower built in Kaifeng. The drawn illustration comes from Su Song's book Xin Yi Xiang Fa Yao published in the year 1092. On the right is the upper reservoir tank with the 'constant-level tank' beneath it. In the center foreground is the 'earth horizon' box in which the celestial globe was mounted. Below that are the time keeping shaft and wheels supported by a mortar-shaped end-bearing. Behind this is the main driving wheel with its spokes and scoops. Above that are the left and right upper locks with an upper balancing lever and upper link: Joseph Needham, in Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Part 2, Mechanical Engineering; image by PericlesofAthens, 14 August 2007

One night as he sat at his table head on hands he saw himself rise and go. One night or day. For when his own light went out he was not left in the dark. Light of a kind came then from the one high window. Under it still the stool on which till he could or would no more he used to mount to see the sky. Why he did not crane out to see what lay beneath was perhaps because the window was not made to open or because he could or would not open it. Perhaps he knew only too well what lay beneath and did not wish to see it again. So he would simply stand there high above the earth and see through the clouded pane the cloudless sky. Its faint unchanging light unlike any light he could remember from the days and nights when day followed hard on night and night on day. This outer light then when his own went out became his only light till it in its turn went out and left him in the dark. Till it in its turn went out.